Love Like White Lightning
by BrittanyTheScrivener
Summary: It is 1947 in rural Tennessee. The war is over, and life is slowly returning to normal. But not for Aldo Raine. Aldo struggles with survivor's guilt, a taste for whiskey that started back in the 20s during his days of running moonshine, and scars from a lifetime of hell. When a woman from his past returns to Maynardville, he gets a shot at a second chance at life.
1. Chapter 1

**1947**

Inside the brick red clapboard-clad colonial located at 44 Fair Street, Nantucket, Hans Landa nervously paced the floor of his study. He stopped to stare out the window and realized that the sun had already set, and that meant he'd spent the better part of eight hours waiting for his telephone to ring.

His stomach had twisted into knots, and he was jittery despite not being able to bring himself to drink even a single cup of coffee since early that morning. Hans Landa was normally as unflappable as they came, but the events of the past several days had virtually turned his life upside down.

Hans let out a defeated sigh as his gaze fell onto the black telephone sitting idly on the desk in front of him. He fought the urge to hurl the phone through the window and turned his attention to the garden just outside.

Harvest was in full swing, and he had found himself with a bounty of fruits and vegetables that he had cultivated with his own two hands. Hans was quite proud of what he'd done—only just the year before, he somehow managed to kill every single plant in the garden. Since his arrival on the island almost two years before, gardening had become one of his favorite ways to unwind. He had been a bit of a recluse from the moment he set foot on American soil. Hans was painfully self-conscious about the offensive scar on his forehead, and everywhere he went, he was met with judging stares. He locked himself away in his house, read books, and drank alone for months until he realized he needed to get his life together and make lemonade with lemons so to speak.

Hans joined many of the social clubs on the island and soon found himself surrounded with friends who shared his interests in literature, languages, and gourmet dining. He had somehow made all of them believe that he was an innocent victim, having had the swastika carved into his face by a group of young men upon his arrival in the States.

It was at a meeting of the local literary club that Hans was introduced to a young writer named Charlotte Redman. She was an auburn-haired beauty with creamy, freckled skin and soft brown eyes. She spoke with a slow, Southern lilt that always seemed to put him at ease. She was nearly twenty years his junior, but it came as no surprise when nine months later, he realized he was entirely smitten. He asked for her hand in marriage not long later. At nearly fifty, Hans was ecstatic that he had finally found someone to share his life with.

He was supposed to marry Charlotte at the Old South Church that late summer day, joined by nearly one hundred of their closest family, friends, and colleagues.

The telephone jingled loudly, jolting Hans back into the present. He immediately grabbed the receiver and barked out an impatient greeting.

"Mr. Landa, this is Sergeant Morris." Morris spoke with a heavy Boston accent, something Hans often struggled with. "We went out to Miss Redman's house and found everything to be in order."

"Everything can't be in order! She is missing, gone, nowhere to be found! I haven't seen her in two days."

"Her roommate says she packed a suitcase and left in her car on Thursday morning. Didn't say where she was going."

"That can't be true! We are supposed to be married in one hour!" Hans spat.

"Listen, Mr. Landa, maybe she got cold feet, you know?"

Hans raked a hand through his hair. He dropped into the overstuffed chair behind his desk and slumped back. "So that's it? She's gone, but you have no idea where she went?"

"Sorry," the Sergeant said.

"Thank you," Hans said before dropping the phone back onto the cradle.

He knew why she might have gone, but he had no idea where.

. . .

One thousand miles southwest of Nantucket, Charlotte Redman crossed the border into Tennessee behind the wheel of her 1946 Chevy Fleetmaster.


	2. Chapter 2

**1947**

Aldo Raine swung the maul back behind his shoulder and brought it down in front of him with one forceful blow. A sharp crack echoed through the woods. He took another swing, his biceps rippling and straining against the thin cotton fabric of his shirt. He kicked the wood aside and lodged the maul into a stump in front of him long enough to pull the sweaty shirt from his chest and mop his forehead with it.

It was late August in Maynardville, which meant it was still hotter than deep fried hell. Despite the heat and stifling humidity of late Tennessee summers, it was never too early to get ready for winter, which could be right around the next corner. Aldo found splitting wood to be therapeutic. The simple act of the maul slicing through the air and cracking through wood was oddly satisfying and kept his body and his mind busy. If he was idle, his mind wandered, and it would only be a matter of time before he found himself itching to have a bottle of some kind in his hands.

Aldo came from a long line of Raine drunks, and he reckoned there was whiskey in his blood. His grandpappy was a happy drunk. His daddy was an abusive drunk. Aldo himself was the Hemingway of drunks, and he'd been that way for as long as he could remember. That was, until after the war. He went from being a self-proclaimed high-functioning drunk to something else entirely and damn near drank himself to death during the winter of '46.

It was colder than hell that winter, but his homemade corn whiskey always made him hotter than the hottest Tennessee summer. Naturally, he didn't see any problems with going outside in the middle of the night in his long underwear when it was well below freezing and snowing like a son-of-a-bitch. The neighbor found him passed out in a snowdrift the next morning, nearly a mile away from his house. He ended up with pneumonia and two frostbitten hands.

That night had been the culmination of two years of guilt and self-loathing over how the hell he managed to be one of only two men in his unit to survive the war. He lost nine brothers in France—nine good men who were young and had wives and children and lives to go back to. Raine had nothing but the pile of wood in front of him, and he was constantly asking himself why he deserved to still be alive and kicking.

"You still with me, old man?"

Aldo smirked and put his hands on his hips. Smitty Utivich stood several feet away holding a maul. "Boy, I could work circles around you. I was just lettin' you catch up." He wouldn't admit that he had let himself slip again—he had let his thoughts take over and consume him to the point he was brought to a complete standstill.

"Right," Utivich remarked.

Aldo looked out across the clearing just as a shining '46 Chevy made its way up the lane toward the house next door.

"Damn, that's a nice ride," he said. He bent down to grab his shirt up off the ground and wiped his face again.

He continued to watch the car as it came to a stop in front of the house. Aldo was waiting to see who would step out of that car. It was none of his damn business who it was, but he couldn't stop himself from nosing. A flash of auburn hair was all he could see, but that was all it took to send a pang of something he couldn't identify straight to his gut like a one-two punch.

. . .

Charlotte Redman was a runner. Specifically, she ran away from things. Anytime the going got tough, she took off. It was much easier to just leave her problems behind than try to deal with them, or at least that's what she always told herself. Charlotte knew it was one of her biggest flaws. She knew it was a problem, and she'd known it for years.

And now she'd gone and done it again.

The difference this time was that she ran back to something. She ran back home. She'd driven twenty hours straight and found herself staring up at the old house she grew up in.

Charlotte had imagined that if she ever she set foot in that little Tennessee town again, nothing would be different. She was sure that all the same little shops lined the streets, still run by the same familiar people who had owned them for decades. She was sure that her momma's house still had the leaky roof, the front porch step that creaked and groaned, and the shutter that slapped the side of the house when the wind blew just right.

Charlotte was disappointed to find that she barely recognized the place. The entire facade of the house had been repainted. The front porch no longer sagged. She climbed the steps—none of which squeaked anymore—and raised her hand to rap on the freshly-painted front door.

She was starting to regret ever going back there. The last time she'd stood on that front porch was back in 1931 when she left and vowed that she would never return.

Charlotte lowered her hand and slowly descended the no-longer-creaking front porch steps and took off toward the clearing beside the house, climbing through weeds to get to the spot where she spent much of her time as a teenager—an old wooden barn on the property next to her mother's house. She'd spent many nights in that little oasis in the middle of the forest.

Charlotte stared in dismay when she realized that in the very spot where the barn once stood, there was a squat bungalow with a wide front porch and a big box dormer on the front looking out toward the treeline. There wasn't a single sign that a barn had ever existed there.

At the edge of the clearing, there was a pond and a single grand old oak tree. Charlotte slowly approached the tree and noticed a single, simple headstone beneath it. There were bright flowers planted all around it, and it appeared that someone was taking very good care of it. Charlotte knelt in front of the headstone and touched it carefully with one hand.

"Look what the cat dragged in," a man drawled loudly, sending Charlotte's heart into overdrive.

Charlotte whirled around and squinted against the sun to see a tall, shirtless man standing behind her. He wore his brown hair combed to the side and a set of dog tags around his neck.

Charlotte stood and folded her arms uncomfortably in front of her. "Aldo Raine."

"I guess the town's been buzzin' with news that you was comin' home. I didn't really believe it when I heard it."

Charlotte shrugged and said, "Here I am."

"People been talkin' 'bout you like you're some kinda celebrity." His expression was soft, but his eyes were cold.

"Hmmph," Charlotte muttered, "I don't know about that."

"You lookin' for the barn?"

"Yes." She turned to house and said, "How long has it been gone?"

"We tore 'er down a coupla years ago," he said.

"I expected to come back here and find everything the same as it was when I left."

Aldo shrugged.

Neither of them spoke for several moments. Charlotte glanced all around her, trying to identify something, anything, that looked familiar. The only familiar sight was that of the man standing in front of her, and even he seemed different.

"You want somethin' to drink?" Aldo asked suddenly, breaking the awkward silence. "I think your momma went into town."

"A drink? I had quite a long drive, do you have anything strong?" Charlotte asked coyly.

Aldo smirked. "You must've forgot who I am."

Charlotte laughed nervously and said, "Right."

"C'mon," he said.

"Is this your place?"

"Just built it," Aldo said proudly. He led her up the steps onto the front porch and through the front door.

"It's beautiful," Charlotte said, her eyes glancing over the shining wood floors. "I didn't know you were into carpentry," Charlotte commented as she followed Aldo to the kitchen.

"After the war, I decided I needed to be settlin' down," Aldo said, throwing open a cabinet and grabbing two glass tumblers off the shelf. He filled each of them with a clear liquid from a mason jar on the counter.

Charlotte joined Aldo at the counter and took one of the glasses from his hand.

"So is there a Mrs. Raine I need to meet?"

Aldo watched her with an amused expression on his face. She took a sip of her drink, and her eyes immediately went wide. She coughed until she was red in the face and said, "Dammit, Aldo, you could've warned me!"

Aldo laughed and said, "Those New Englanders've made ya soft. You used to be able to drink this shit all night long."

Charlotte wiped her lips and said, "You're still shining?"

Aldo waved his hand and said, "Nah, it lost its fun 'while back."

"You mean it lost its fun when it was no longer illegal?"

"You said that, I didn't," Aldo said with a half grin. He set his still-full glass on the counter.

Charlotte sipped at her drink once more, wincing as the liquid left a fiery trail down her throat.

Aldo stuffed his hands in his pockets and said, "Listen, Charlie, I meant to get ahold of you when I got back in the States. I just—. I'm sorry."

"I'll take another drink," she muttered softly.

She studied Aldo as he filled her glass with more of the pungent clear liquid. He certainly hadn't changed much since she'd last seen him, save for a few new creases at the corners of his eyes. "Aldo, I'm not sure how long I'm going to be here, but I'd like to have dinner with you or something before I go back."

Aldo shrugged. "That really necessary?"

Charlotte was taken aback. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. "I just thought it might be nice to catch up." Charlotte dropped her glass onto the counter and said, "I should be going."

"You walked outta here sixteen years ago, and now you wanna pretend that everything is just dandy? Did ya really think the world would stop spinnin' just for you, Charlie? You moved on, and we all did, too."

Charlotte stood in front of him, speechless.

The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs alerted them both. Charlotte turned just as a dark-headed man of small stature entered the kitchen.

"Ah, this must be Mrs. Raine," Charlotte quipped, trying to break the tension in the room. She could practically hear Aldo's jaw clenching.

"Charlotte, this is Smitty Utivich, a buddy o' mine from the war," Aldo said. "He's visitin' from New York."

"I'm delighted to meet you, Mr. Utivich," Charlotte said. She shook his hand and said, "I'll be going now."

Both men watched her leave, but Utivich was the first to speak after the door slammed shut behind her.

"That's her, isn't it?" Utivich asked, sounding almost excited.

"What in the hell're you on about?"

"The girl you always talked about. The one that …" Utivich said, stopping himself. "The one that Donny was always egging you on about."

There'd been several women in Aldo's life … his first back in the summer of 1918 (he was only sixteen), a girl here and there (he was just having fun). But then there was the one there in Maynardville. Charlotte Redman, the girl next door. The One (he loved her).


End file.
